Laura discovers the delight of love with her cousin, Hugo. It is not an easy relationship, and it is complicated by Hugo's wife, Rachel, by his wild sister, Susie, and by his adolescent son, Oliver, who is half in love with Laura himself.

As the relationship deepens, Laura becomes obsessed with a major new project—a commission to sculpt the Stations of the Cross for a church in Liverpool; she becomes deeply involved with Hug's family and in the antagonisms within it—between Hugo and Susie, between Hugo and his son. At the end of this subtle and moving novel, Laura is again the outsider, but she has explored new depths of living, found new dimensions of sorrow and of joy.